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Sponiebr

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Everything posted by Sponiebr

  1. The master lists are now and have been here on Craftserver, (well not like right HERE-HERE, but here in this subforum). I'd strongly suggest that you check out ALL of the beautifully collated and pinned topics/threads at the top of this sub which I've linked for you below. https://www.craftserver.com/forum/28-fragrance-discussion/ Anywho... Yeah, so I HTH. Slainte! Sponiebr THE Executor of BAD Ideas and Sundry Services
  2. Yep! I've gone ROUGE! (Let's face it, it's not gonna be a shock to anyone that I've gone off campus...) ANYWHO... I just LOVE typing SO MUCH that I've started a list on the Craftserver FB group of FO suppliers. Just MY personal favorites. Maybe y'all could add YOUR favorite suppliers too? Cheers! Sponiebr The EXecutor of BAD ideAs and Sundry serviceS
  3. Yanno, I've got a LOT of soap that I never wrapped and it ALL has this powdery white coating on it. In MY opinion soda ash can only form when there is active lye exposed to air. So if your soap is cured when you cut it there's little chance that you will form soda ash on the bars. To keep the tops from ashing up I spray, nay... I SOAK the ever-love'n piss outta the tops of my soaps with IPA and then lay on a sheet of plastic wrap onto the top WHILE it's soaking wet. That seals the plastic wrap to the top of the soap and the soap mold and I leave the loaf set at least 24 hours before I unmold and cut. Anywho... That lovely white powder coating that I still get on my soaps after a year or so is stearic acid that's been brought to the surface as the FO kinda gasses off, or at least that's my working theory... Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services
  4. And then there was that one time, at band camp, when your scales went Bahoobies up and you ended up having to use all that soap as weed killer... Sponiebr THE Executor of car repairs, no, wait... BAD IDEAS! (that's it!) Bad Ideas and Sundry Services....
  5. Jayzus... Y'all having to resort to FRUIT to get predictable candles... I jist... CAIN'T even! Sponiebr, THE (Yup, STILL) Executor of BAD (horrible, you can't EVEN IMAGINE) Ideas and Sundry Services
  6. Doesn't "scum" = "volume"? I mean... it KINDA does, doesn't it?
  7. Even KOH? I thought the ionic whatevermafutitzcalled from the potassium was supposed to be GOOD for hair? As the French would say: No? Damn... I've got 8 frigg'n POUNDS of KOH now. 😕 Ok so WHAT syndet would be the ideal? SLS? CB? TSP? (sorry... BAD SPONIE!!!!!)
  8. Jear Desus... The things we do for love. So my GF has very fine, wavy, frizzy hair and she is horribly frustrated with it. I am a soapmaker, BUT I am apparantly ALSO a masochist. Why do you ask? Well... I MAY have volunteered myself for making shampoo... I don't want to use those syndets though. My theororetical plan is that I should take my normal soap formulation (I'm talking fats here) and run it through soapcalc for 0% SF and calculate how much KOH I need... Make up my KOH solution with my normal ridiculous amount of silk added to it. Use my normal HTFHP method BUT substitute my sugar for glycerin, and skip my normal SL additive. Then post cook add in a 8-10% SF mix of SOMETHING... (Jojoba and Tocopheryl acetate, and olive oil? I dunno...) and something that smells like her normal scent choices. Dump it in a bucket add in my distilled water, cover, and rot it for some heretofore undetermined amount of time. Stir it up, dilute as required, test it on my own widdle noggin. IF all goes well, bottle it up, put a bow on it and hand it over with a lacivious grin.... How close to approximately correct am I? Halp! Please: 😃 Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services
  9. Thanks and Please... (In whatever order you need them) So as luck would have it my GF is in love with B&BW's Golden Sunflower... which OF COURSE is a discontinued scent. Ok so to MY nose (and I have a HELLUVA gifted nose) it smells like Baja Cactus Blossom and Coconut something r'nuther MAYBE Serendipity and Baja Cactus... with just a hint of citrus? That's all FINE and GREAT but I HATE blending FO to create scents. Does anyone know of a Dupe of Golden Sunflower? I tried NG's sunflower and it AIN'T even close. HALP! Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services (dammit!)
  10. Welp! The unthinkable finally got me. But a little backstory first... I was in a soaping group that had... (how shall I say this?) some "disquiet souls" amongst it's membership. Me being a man did nothing to help that situation. I'm not at all shy about admitting the fact that as a man I am unequivocally and (sometimes) irreparably aclueistic about certain things, especially things explicitly feminine in nature. So one fine day a post was made regarding using human breast milk as an additive for soap. This curdled my grits upon seeing it. (STAHP! come on... I'm a DUDE...) I wasn't deterred from investigating this idea however. I approached it from a rational and practical perspective. Use it like you would any fresh milk. It's OBVIOUS. HOWEVER, I thought (AT THAT TIME) it was a bit.... uh... let's call it "wasteful", e.g. that the baby fuel would be better used and more appreciated by the baby. I mean any additional benefits the milk would have would just be denatured by the soaping process and even if they weren't it wouldn't have much (if any) benefit about the exterior of the aforementioned baby. Unfortunately for me I had a momentary lapse of reason, forgetting WHERE I was at, and voiced my thoughts in writing. The "disquieted souls" turned upon me in much the same way that the residents of a formicary turn upon a baby bird dropped upon their roof. Needless to say, my confusion was NOT appreciated. I didn't stay past the 5th day to hear anymore opinions about my character. Fast forward to present day. I've often thought about that incident and have cone to some interesting conclusions about making human breast milk soap. I suppose it could be, if nothing else, an incredibly short lived chance for the mother to do something special for their child that they could never do again. In that stream of thought I think the concept quite beautiful. Karma apparantly caught wind of my musings and so I was approached to make human breast milk soap. I was quite surprised by my experience using this rare additive. The first thing I noticed was that human breast milk is some BUTTERY STUFF. I mean the bags* were literally slippery with fat content. (*plastic bags of the zip seal variety, just to be clear) According to my web research human milk is also fairly high in sugar content. Both of these things are excellent additives to soap. Anyway I added the thawed milk directly to chilled lye solution (I premake my lye solution with silk and sugar already added) and let it work it's differences out with the lye before soaping. Upshot was it soaped PERFECTLY. It cut like a dream. It's probably the most mild and one nicest soaps I think I've ever made. Yet again, the answers that have previously eluded me come to light if given enough time. In other news I've been "busy" as of late but thus time I'm ACTUALLY busy with what I've been wanting to be busy with... Thank God. (and I mean every word of that last sentence.) I've got another post to make pursuant to my busyness. Slainte, Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services
  11. Welcome to the Chandler's paradise. Sponiebr (AKA: NOT a Chandler) The Executor of Bad Ideas, Soapmaking, and Sundry Services
  12. Finger's crossed... Along those lines there DOES seem to be a market saturation point FAR FAR below what I had envisioned. Still... pretty cool idea. (and you're right, it's about time.)
  13. The GOOD news to this newfound (again) drifting without a moral compass, is that I'm gonna get on the POPULAR HYPE wagon and make some money. I just dropped $200 on a SINGLE additive. Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services
  14. I use it when Tussah gets to be too much to replace. It works fine. I can't tell any functional difference really, except that the lye solution isn't as "muddied". I think I got mine on some deal off of Amazon or Etsy for like 8 ounces for $16 or some kind of unbelievable deal. That's how I buy MOST of my soap making materials though. I wait until there's a ridiculous deal and then I cash in on it in a major way. So I just had to calculate my rate of use at .5g per 100ml of water or 5g per liter of LIQUID ONLY. (That's not actual total solution that's only the water portion of the solution). I chop up the total fiber for the entire batch into 1/4" long snips and wet it completely with the solution, frequently running my SB in the water with the fine silk choppings so that it gets ALL of the air out and gets EVERY FIBER wet with water BEFORE I start adding my lye to the solution. (My water is fridge cold when I start this process too.) I find that adding the silk to the water BEFORE adding the lye cuts ALL stink / hack-up-a-lung potential from the equation and leaves nothing but a really nice floral sweet scent to the lye solution. You HAVE TO get it all dissolved though before you leave it to rest. The lye AND the silk have BOTH got to be in solution BEFORE you stop with the stirring. Also, if you like to add sugar to your solution you need to make sure you add and completely dissolve ALL of your sugar into the water solution BEFORE you add the silk and then the lye. If you try to add granulated sugar AFTER your lye solution has been made the sugar will just clump up and sink to the bottom of the solution. If you want to add in sugar AFTER the lye solution is made (with the dissolved silk fiber) you have to dissolve the sugar into a small amount of water and then add that water to the lye solution. If you add ANY water to the lye solution it WILL heat up, and it will heat up even more if it contains anything but water. EDIT: So I looked it up and it wasn't 8 ounces it was 4.4 ounces (precisely 100g.) at $16.99 of really EXCELLENT mulberry silk tops. I think I found one tiny nit in the whole bag. Good deal for a pinch hit, not earth shattering though. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B089G7XXBH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Cheers, Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services.
  15. Lost another one of my moral compasses! (They just don't make'm like they used to...) It BARELY swirled the bowl even once... and now it's just BUSTED. (AGAIN...) SO... I had to have the RSPO chat again. Tried to explain that there isn't any practical difference between RSPO and a regular Palm Oil plantation, but we GOTTA have that RSPO certification. OK so the deal is (and I think this is a damned FINE deal too...) they pay the difference between the shipped price of their RSPO 50 pound cube of relabeled AAK palm oil shortening and me ordering my 50 pound cube of original labeled AAK palm oil shortening IN MY REGULAR fats order. See, here's where I lost my grip on the old compass and errantly entered the toilet bowl regatta... AGAIN, (sighs). So I calculated the shipped price of the 50 pound cube of RSPO against the shipped price of my 50 pound cube of regular Palm oil. So some interesting things here: RSPO $67.62 shipping $60. $127.62 That's it. That's the ONLY CHOICE. (Oh, I've LOOKED too... OH, HAVE I LOOKED...) AAK: $50.99 shipping with REGULAR order $22.61. =$73.60 AAK: $50.99 shipping BY ITSELF $29.12 =$80.11 Now as I wouldn't be ordering this BY ITSELF (that defeats the WHOLE POINT of bulk ordering materials) I say that the price difference I SHOULD be asking for is between the regular order shipping savings and NOT the solo order difference. It's not a HUGE deal this difference of $54.02 vs $47.51 (it's only $6.51 FCOL!) but that's not the FARK'N POINT!!!! (moral compass point that is.) Now, what would YOU do? I say take the money and run.... away... in chorteling, gleeful, gloating. Here's my contention about the RSPO vs "Regular" palm and MY/OUR use of palm oil. It makes ZERO difference if I buy a 50 lb cube of palm oil from either side. If WE ALL bought one or the other it would make ZERO difference to ANY OF it. BOTH the regular palm oil plantation and the RSPO plantations strip out jungle to plant palm oil trees and then they rotate harvest the fruits (by the time they get to the end of the "row" the original starting row has fruited and is ready for harvest again...). The DIFFERENCE is that the "old" plantations have deforested enough jungle to not need to expand e.g. cut down more forrest, they've "ARRIVED", or as we say in the South they're "Have'n it". RSPO basically means only the major plantation owners (the ones that did THE MOST damage over all) should be allowed to make the money. Newer, independent farmers will be surarily excluded from any benefit except to work the larger plantations. And yet, even ALL OF OUR combined chandlery and soap making (cottage industry NOT super conglomerate soap and chandlery) still could not make a bit of difference. I guess I'm more concerned about my aversion to suffering for the sake of suffering while simultaneously bolstering the institutions that created the suffering in the first place than I really am about the loss of another useless idiom I've cast into the great swish of public perception. This was NOT what I expected being "woke" was going to be like. NOT AT ALL. FML. Sponiebr, The Executor of BAD Ideas, Sundry Services and suffering internal conflict 'n sh!t...
  16. Ok I have 3785g of water I will divide that by 1.5 to get 2523g for my lye 3785+2523=6308 2523/6308=.399999999999999999 (call it 40%).... Thank you!
  17. OK, so I've finally hit the wall on understanding the whatforthisbe's of soapcalc.net. SO... In soapcalc I've started using the % of lye to figure out my correct volume of lye solution for my batches because I'm masterbatching my lye solution... No sweat... UNTIL I hit this little snag: I was double checking my amounts and here's the part I don't understand. I want a 40% lye to water solution. Let's take the following as an example: For 1000g of water 400g of lye would be mathematically 40%. Let's double check that: 1000*.4= 400. Right? WRONG! Soapcalc sez I need 666.66g of lye for that solution to be 40%. I'm sorry soapcalc but that's 66% and NOT 40%... Ok, so maybe it's like .666 (such an appropriate number for this example) - 1.00= .334... only .334 is 33% and NOT 40%. I've checked this across various other formulations and it sticks perfectly. They're ALL listed as 40% lye solutions but are actually 66% solutions... So... I checked against perhaps it's total lye solution to oils... NOPE! Turns out to be 34%... WTAF is going ON here? I mean I don't really question the idea because it's been working PERFECTLY but I don't understand HOW or WHY they're listing it as 40%. The actual lye to water ratio is listed as 1.5:1 which is spot on... Anyone? Cheers, Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas, Sundry Services, and Mathematical Conundrums.
  18. I put a bass guitar tuning machine just above the stainless steel bolt in the picture. It works perfectly. I don't know HOW the hell I survived this long hand cutting loaves of soap. I get a loaf done in MINUTES now and I don't have to do anything other than bevel. The beveling is only if I so choose, which I think I will not be choosing to do that in the future. The only reason I beveled in the first place is because I had to plane the bars flat from the inconsistent cuts I was making by hand cutting.
  19. Out of curiosity how thick is the wood from the one you got off Etsy and how thick is the bow (like what is the distance from the outside of the frame to the inside of the frame along the open part) I could cut plexi but I would rather make the bow out of steel tubing or something far less, literally plastic, than plexi. Plexiglass would work fine IF it's thick enough. I used 3/4" plywood for my bow AND my original idea was to layer 2 sheets of 3/4 plywood face to face with some sort of impervious glue like a foaming polyurethane (Gorilla glue), or epoxy to handle the warping issue. The warping issue might also be solved by cutting metal plates to fit one or both faces. I dunno... I had to have something FAST to get rolling with though, so that's what I had on hand. The plywood should take awhile to warp though as I made it from MUCH thicker material with MUCH thicker top and arm bracing than any of the ones I saw commercially for sale. IF, (when) it DOES warp I can pull the cutting bow out and replace it with either a metal laminate version or a metal tube version without much trouble. (so this COULD be repaired/upgraded if needed.)
  20. For all' y'all that KNOW me, nothing's changed. For those that DON'T, I'm a CHEAP BASTARD. I've FINALLY gotten to the point where I HAVE TO cut equally sized bars of soap and can no longer "improvise" with the "rustic hand cut" routine... (I DID have a good long run of that though.) Anyway SOAP cutters are EXPENSIVE... I don't DO "expensive". (See above for details) Hence my newest creation: Single cut soap cutter. It's made out of scrap, salvaged, and repurposed everything, (EVEN THE SCREWS are used). It may be goofy looking, but I'm hopeful that it will perform well. It's set FOREVER at 1" thick cuts. Ok so, I DID actually order ONE new part for this thing (ONLY ONE MIND YOU). I got the CHEAPEST pair of Bass Guitar tuning machines I could find on Amazon ($9.99 shipped) which means I'll have enough for ANOTHER (hopefully nicer looking one) in the future that will never happen, because I'm ALSO a LAZY BASTARD... (Hey! I OWN IT!) (AND NO... I can't be bothered to finish it. See above for details) WIthout much further ado... I present the single cut soap cutter: {*Cheap 1980's midi 8 bit fanfare plays softly in the background*} Cheers, Sponiebr The Executor of BAD Ideas and Sundry Services
  21. They have lost ALL control of ALL classes of mail. I've had things delivered and then get an update from the tracking "system" that shows it 2 states away... They're not TRACKING anything anymore. They notify you of a tracking number and then based off a predetermined calculation plot the tracking notifications to where it SHOULD be based on the time since the tracking number was created... It's not even a reasonable prediction "service". They know what the route from point A to point B is and they plot it along THAT route. It's like those math word problems in school: 2 cars heading to Topeka one at 70 mph and the other at 66 kph where is the blue bus at 4 pm and is Chuck's wife having a boy or a girl? Who is the father? (Hint: A feather from the breast of a titmouse weighs .02 grams in Des Moines but .021 grams in Colfax...) See my diatribe above your comment on USPS and their "service".
  22. If I've said it once in the past decade, I've said it a hundred times. The USPS will be defunct by 2025. They keep limiting services and increasing pricing to the point NOW where even 1st class mail isn't being delivered on time or correctly. I had 2 Netflix movies that were reported as delivered go AWOL for a week. PART of the problem I suspect is that the USPS employees (the regular ones) are taking their free 80 hours of COVID-19 leave. It's a free 2 week vacation ON TOP of their regular leave. Now that's just my suspicion. WHY would I have that as a suspicion, you ask? Well! I happen to KNOW that the leave is available. SECOND I have been told that the USPS regular employees are all out on leave and the USPS is having contractors that DON'T know OR (apparently) CARE about how to properly process and deliver the mail (I was a Postmaster at one time, it AIN'T that hard folks). So... I'm guessing they're burning up their federal COVID leave. Anyway... Whaddya mean by DEFUNCT!!!? It's the USPS!!! It's our NATIONAL POSTAL SERVICE!!! IT WILL NEVER BE DEFUNCT.... Ohhhhhhesssitwilll.... Right now the USPS is and HAS BEEN for a VERY LONG TIME a private enterprise with Federal oversight on price changes. It's a PRIVATE company, just like Fed-Ex or UPS, BUT with the added burden of having to get Congressional approval for price changes. I personally think that the USPS has gone FAR PAST the point-of-no-return on their INSANE routing changes, "streamlined automation", personnel cutbacks, price hikes, and service removals. They CAN'T recover from this SO... My guess is that the USPS will be REABSORBED as a Federal Agency and that is BAD, BAD, BAD, news for everyone. WHY!? It would be more reliable service and lower costs, blah, blah, blah... Oh yes... It would... BUT it would ALSO be a MASSIVE reduction on the types of things you can ship through the mail. More IMPORTANTLY it will change the political scene DRASTICALLY. I'm not going to elaborate any further than to let YOUR OWN PRIVATE THOUGHTS on the matter run wild with the idea of voting by a mail service RUN and OWNED by the Government. The Federal Government has CLEARLY already taken over some of the USPS services like the "Informed Delivery". Let me tell ya what that is called: Automated Electronic Archiving of Mail Covers. For you gamers this is basically "Big Brothering GOD MODE". When I was a Postmaster it was a FELONY to make mail covers (a mail cover is a photograph or reproduction of the mail face of a mail article) without an OFFICIAL investigation going on. Now the USPS is now offering this electronically as "a service", and "Oh, NO!!!!" THEY don't keep any records of the mail covers.... Which is correct. ANOTHER US agency is keeping the records. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. I guess... Meh... Not really too plussed about it, honestly. Sponiebr The Executor of Bad Ideas and Sundry Services
  23. That's kinda what I was figuring. Thank you!
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